The S Dist. Structure maintains a list of selected, significant, predominantly urban areas in Australia which are not located within a Capital City SD (see Chapter 2). S Dists enable comparable statistics to be produced about these selected urban areas. In the main, the structure is used to report intercensal population estimates.

S Dists are maintained as a separate structure from the Main Structure because:

the total area of S Dists does not cover the whole of Australia

some S Dists straddle S/T boundaries (e.g. the Gold Coast-Tweed S Dist. lies partly in Queensland and partly in New South Wales).